I thought I had plenty of time to pull out of the intersection
And in some ways I did. I made the left turn with no collision.
But once I’d gotten firmly into the lane and peered at the SUV driving past me, I could see the driver who had been barrelling towards me disagreed, illustrated by his having both his hands off of his steering wheel, quizzically hanging in the air, his eyes gazing my way behind his dark aviators.
I did have plenty of time to make the turn by the way. I was fairly certain the other guy was going too fast. My suspicions were confirmed because his front bumper had a New Jersey plate attached to it…
I’m beginning that stage, that pivot point, in life when you frantically comb through all of your past choices, wondering which ones are the ones that led you to where you are now. And then fretting over the choices you need to make to adjust course from some of those choices, placing yourself on a better path so the future you might be more generous to present you than the present you is towards the past you.
Sometimes the past assumptions were made correctly – I did make that left turn successfully, after all. Although at least one other person disagreed with me.
Sometimes the past assumptions were made incorrectly. Once in high school, I thought I had a clear path straight across a busy small-town road that was filled with parked cars on each shoulder, obscuring the view. My reading of the situation was buoyed by a delivery driver who saw me craning to see if there was, indeed, no oncoming traffic – the delivery driver waved me out just for my tiny coupe to be t-boned by a husky pickup truck. Everyone was fine. The pickup truck’s sizable cage of a front bumper had a few nicks and scratches on it. My car spent a month in the shop getting a new quarter panel along with some other love. My read of the situation had been incorrect. My trusting of the delivery driver who seemed to have a better line of sight was misguided. He was gone by the time I was out of my car, hopefully to deliver something better to his next customer, but unable to vouch for the mistake he’d handed over to me.
When is the path clear? Who do you trust? “What is truth?”
Salient questions that often lead to silence as answers. Or frantic answers from well-meaning but misguided voices. Or aggressive voices from individuals embedded in the side that stands to be better off by the outcome.
“Do it. Now. Do it.” barks Dwight Schrute at Andy Bernard in an episode of The Office as Dwight talks Andy down on the price of the Nissan Xterra Andy’s selling. Two paper salesmen shake hands over a deal being made more as a power play than as an equitable business transaction. Make the deal. Get it done. Let me have my way and come out on top.
Andy regrets the sale. We regret our choices – the ones hastily made and the ones we pour thought into that still don’t pan out as planned.
Part of the reason why we regret these choices is because everything we do makes everything we are. Everything we are becomes the thing we broadcast as “me.” Author David Dark writes “there is no on-and-off switch when it comes to my witness… [it’s] the sum over everything I do and leave undone. The words are there, but the actions speak louder.” (Don’t get hung up on those words dripping in “Christianese”: “witness” and “religion” – in this sense they’re describing what you’re broadcasting and what you believe, whether that’s wrapped in a faith-based view or not.) In his book “Life’s Too Short to Pretend You’re Not Religious,” Dark spells out a wider view of what it means to be religious – not in terms of your theism or atheism, but in terms of the sum of each thing you believe congealing into a “religion”: “religion can radically name the specific ways we’ve put our lives together and, perhaps more urgently, the ways we’ve allowed other people to put our lives together for us.”
We are the sum of our parts, even when who we are is “Theseus-tic” – some parts are changed out over time, but the whole is still the same.
What we believe, what we endorse, what we promote… it’s all a reflection of “us.”
Who I am today? Who was I yesterday that made me this? How do I better myself for tomorrow?
I need to ask these questions. And I need you to be part of it, just like you need me to be part of those questions for you:
How can we make each other better for tomorrow? How can our religion be more true? How can I be careful to make my left turns but not cut you off (or making you think I did) in the process? How can I recognize that I need you like you need me like I need you?
Neighbors are still neighbors if our “religions” aren’t adjoining.
I can embrace you without embracing or espousing what you believe.
You can still break bread with me even if you don’t buy into the things that I buy into.
The streets our houses sit on intersect somewhere.
The road ahead is cluttered with the same traffic as the road we’ve already traveled. How can we make each other better today?